Nikko

The Weekend Getaway

From Yokohama I traveled north of Tokyo to Nikko for a short two day trip. I wanted to revisited the Nikko Tamozawa Imperial Villa which is one of the best examples of traditional Japanese architecture that I can freely walk around.

Unfortunately on the first day it was raining and pretty foggy. I wasn’t too bothered because I’d been to Nikko before and so I wasn’t urgently in need to see or photograph anything in particular. I did see a part of the Nikko Futarasan jinja that I hadn’t before. The mugginess was kind of nice because the next day was sunny but super cold so I saw Nikko in two conditions.

For example, the Okariden was built as a temporary shrine but eventually became pernament. It’s off to the side so it doesn’t receive very much traffic but take a look at how it looks one day apart.

The Imperial villa was wonderful to be at again but it was so stupidly cold it was hard for me to enjoy it. I don’t have a lot of warm clothes and because it’s an old old building there’s no heating so walking around in slippers is still freezing cold for the toes.

That said, it was great to be there again. In particular, there’s one window that I think is my favourite view in all of Japan. It’s a circular opening that looks across a pathway to the dining hall of the villa. Compositionally it’s wonderfully executed and I enjoyed seeing it again, this time being able to better photograph it.

It also happened to be pretty windy, which was the major contribution to the cold, so most of the shutters were closed.

I didn’t stay as long as I would have liked because I was too cold. On the outside I took a few photos and then left because I was too cold to stay. But I think I’m reasonably happy with the photos I got.

This time in Nikko I noticed a garden at the Nikkozan Rinnoji Temple. It wasn’t an overly spectacular garden but there some nice pathways through moss beds that I enjoyed. In the spring this garden would probably be a lot nicer since there’d be more foliage but one thing that bothered me was how the groundskeeper was cleaning up leaves on the pathway but the pond was covered in them. The garden also faces south into the sun but I think it would have been nicer if it faced north. Then it could bring the mountains into the scenery and the sun would be behind the viewer.